UNECOM: An Institution of Higher Earning

$200,380
(Average indebtedness for 2007 UNECOM graduates who incurred medical school debt)



It's official: The University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine has set its students up to be #1 in debt for any medical school in the country.

More than twice as much debt as our friends at Hopkins and nearly three times that of those at Stanford, we, the indebted, must really be getting a bang-up education. We must all be gunners, all selling ourselves to the research giants or schmoozing our way into highly paid specialties.

Oh, here's the COM's mission statement:

The University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine transforms students into health care leaders who advance patient-centered, high quality osteopathic primary care and community health for the people of New England and the nation.

Well, that doesn't seem right. How are these future primary carers going to pay off this mountain of promissory notes with their meager community health salaries? Maybe the mission statement is all just PR bullshit and students are really just here to make money. Maybe they can pay back the debt...

• 70% of its graduates practice in primary care disciplines (Family Medicine, General Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Obstetrics & Gynecology).
• State of Maine: 9% of practicing physicians are UNECOM graduates, comprising 15% of Maine’s primary care physician workforce.
• 24% of UNECOM graduates practicing in Maine serve in rural areas.
• New England: 17% of UNECOM graduates are practicing in medically underserved areas."
  
• http://www.une.edu/com/

Guess not...

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At the 8.65% APR most of us are getting on our loans, the average student is paying $17,332 per year in INTEREST ALONE. Since most students won't be able pull that scratch together during their residencies while their making less than a first year high school teacher, we might as well bring that average debt number up to 250K.

Now where do these numbers come from? Heating oil is the cheapest it's been in years; the building is relatively new and doesn't need repairs; the university owns the land it's sitting on, and it's Biddeford - is the cost of living really that high? What betterment in our education - what necessity - prompted this stark increase in an already steep price tag? It must have been serious, because after reporting 2009-2010 tuition and fees to the federal government (to set the price for federal student loans) UNECOM raised tuition again. Now, students must take out GRAD-Plus and private loans to simply pay the baseline tuition.

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Is the school hedging its bets against a bad economy? Is the tuition hike meant to pay for the soon-to-be money tree of pharmaceutical research that is the Pickus building? Is the larger UNE family just squeezing the COM's teet a little harder than usual? That sounds right, but no one knows. As a private institution, UNE reserves the right to keep its books secret from its students. With a policy of financial opacity we can only guess.

My guess is the administration wants it both ways.

They want to bring in the cash to bolster the institution all the while believing they are setting up their students to practice in underserved areas. They've probably talked themselves into believing that National Health Scholarships are freely available and that military service is an easy 4-year option with no strings attached. With all this magical thinking and willful ignorance, though, they neglect the greater truth: Students should not have to sell their souls or become indentured servants to get an education that's meant to serve the poor.

I fear this whole thing is like that Cat Stevens song where a father is shocked to see his son repeating all his own mistakes after giving him a lifetime of bad examples. The administrators at UNECOM probably think their moral and financial compromises are serving to aid the medical students and their future patients. The day will come, though, when they realize a profit centered medical education has created profit centered physicians and all those good intentions will be for naught.


With irony, sarcasm, and no hint of professionalism whatsoever, I dedicate this song to UNECOM. Lucky us...